Hello again and welcome back to America under the Microscope. Hello James.
Hello Lulu.
So today we're going to talk about something that is quite new or quite unfamiliar to Chinese listeners, but one of the big part of American culture, American life, which is camping.
Yes, we're gonna talk about sleeping in the great outdoors.
Yeah, I don't, I have to say, I'm not a very outdoorsy kind of person. I don't really understand camping that much.
Fair well, Americans outdoorsy-ness or being in the outdoors is a big part of our culture. I mean throughout a lot of American history is about settlers moving across the land, uh living off the land, hunting, fishing general things that we think of as activities for fun now. And it's just become part of our culture.
So would you say the majority of Americans had some sort of camping experience?
Yeah. Most people have camping experience but there is a difference between people who are from the city and people who come from more rural countryside areas with obviously people in the countryside do more outdoor activities like camping, whereas people in the city may only get to do this a couple of times in their life.
What about you?
I grew up in the countryside and I did this all throughout my childhood. I love camping. That's one thing I really miss about America.
How often did you use to do it? Like once a month or?
Yeah, growing up with monthly.
Now a basic question when you talk about camping, what exactly do you guys do? Is it just sleeping outdoors?
Well, if you want to boil it to the most simple idea then yes, but to us, for most Americans it's the vision of being outside, sleeping in a tent, sitting around a camp fire with family and friends.
And what do you do when you sit around the campfire?
Well, if you watch a lot of American TV shows and movies you will hear things like people will tell ghost stories and things like that, but that's not been my experience. General people just chat, tell stories and then they cook us things on sticks. They'll put hot dogs or marshmallows on a stick and cook them over the fire.
This is marshmallows. This is, I've only seen that in American TV shows like marshmallows, in China, we definitely don't think of them as something that can be roasted. So you guys roast it over campfire.
You know the goal is to make them nice and golden brown with a crispy surface and the inside will be nice and gooey.
Lovely, but surely you're not just eating hot dogs and marshmallows.
Oh no, we cook regular food when we go camping. Some people will even cook pretty elaborate meals depending on how much stuff they wanna take with them.
Okay. Earlier on you talked about going camping with family and friends. Which one would you say is more common for people to go with friends their own age or go with their family member?
Well, I'd say it's mostly family. This is something you'd kind of see parents do with their children. But it is not uncommon for adults to go camping with their friends, but it's still far more of a family activity in most people's minds.
OK. So that's the basics about camping, but then where to go? Can you just go anywhere where there's nature?
Not really. Um you can camp in a lot of public grounds like public forest， national forest, but in general most people camp at official campgrounds which are run by a government service called the forest service. And these campgrounds are usually in natural areas or they put them next to on a scenic site like you'd find them next to Yellowstone. They'll be campsites dear places like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon or many other natural scenery spots in America.
I bet those are not free.
No, unfortunately they aren't, but they aren't expensive either. In general the cost around ten dollars a night to reserve your space and you can reserve their space now online, you can look up the camp site you can go online pay it and when you reserve it, you have a parking spot. There will be a usually a picnic table, a place to have a fire that safer so it doesn't like burn down the forest and usually an area to set up tents and stuff.
And these campsites there are all over the country.
Yes they are everywhere. In the added benefit is staying at these places, they usually also have toilets.
Oh which brings us to the next topic, what kind of things, what kind of equipment or tools do you need to bring or take with you to a camping trip, on a camping trip?
The general equipment is you need a tent to sleep in; a sleeping bag to keep you warm and you're probably going to need a really big backpack to carry everything.
Don't you take your car to these things?
Well yeah. But sometimes where you park and where you're going to be camping might not be …
Very far.
Won't be very far usually, but they might not be next to each other. But you also need to take things like your dishes you'll need to use, food you want to eat, usually a camp stove so you can do cooking.
What is it camp stove? Is it like a portable stove?
Yeah, it's a portable gas stove, so you have to bring the gas as well. Um you'll need to bring things to build fire, wood and all these other kinds of equipment. It's a pretty long list.
I'm sure if you are doing that in China, if you are a camper in China, you would know what that is. So a camp stove. This brings us to the earlier question: When you're in the woods or in a nature, you're not next to any modern equipment and amenities. What if you need to go to the toilet? What can you do?
Dig a hole.
Okay…
Um. Bury it.
Why do you have to bury it?
There, it can be for cleanliness reasons. I mean they can smell and it also can attract animals.
Ah. By the way, is it dangerous? I mean, do you have any dangerous wildlife around? So when you camp do you have to watch out for really scary animals like bears?

Yes. Well that really will depend on where you go camping. But yes, there are bears; there are places in America that do have venomous snakes. There are some places that have insects you probably don't want to be bitten by.
Okay. But how do you cope with those? How do you prepare for those?
To be fair, most animal attacks like that are rare，so most people don't think about it. And in terms of bugs and insects, they have sprays for that.
And I guess I am very much into like cleanliness. So another question would be how can you shower or wash yourself? How long does this kind of camping trip take?
Well for most people they just do weekend camping trips. So they just kind of forgo the shower for a day.
Also it's just an overnight thing. And it's pretty easy to still wash your face and brush your teeth. But people who go camping for like a week at a time, they just stink.
But I don't really think that's for a lot of people.
No most people don't do that. That's for pretty small groups.
So when do people actually camp? Let's say around the year?
Well this probably wouldn't be that surprising but generally from late spring through early fall when the weather is the nicest. Yeah, but a lot of people like to go camping, especially during the summer holidays like in America, the end of May we have what's called memorial day weekend, so it'll be a three day weekend, so really popular one.
Yeah. But does that mean that if it's like in China when it's a public holiday, every tourist site is packed? What about campsites? Did they get packed?
They'll be out what's called at capacity, which means every single spot will be full and it probably was reserved well in advanced.
Oh, you can reserve campsite. If they say they're at capacities like hotels you cannot go in.
Correct.
OK, now a little bit more about what you do apart from sleeping in nature, apart from, you know, cooking all these basics, what do you do for fun?
Well, when most people go camping, they are usually doing in another activity on top of it, like commonly would be like hiking. So you'd camp at near mountains or hills and then during the day time you'll go hiking up the hills and stuff.
Walking around essentially.
And a lot of people go camping near fishing holes, lakes, rivers and go fishing.
Do you catch your dinner?
Some people do, but it is a good idea to have a backup.
If you're not good at fishing and any other things you would do?
Sure some people will do like boating activities, like swimming or playing in lakes. There are tons of activities you can do outside mountain, biking and so on.
So making an activity like an activity holiday.
So most people don't just sit around the camp site do nothing. Some people do but most don't.
Okay we learn some basics about camping and in the advanced episode we're going to explore a little bit more what's behind this culture. Before we end today's episode, let us look at some camping terms. How the activity of camping has affected the language.
Right. So we're gonna look at three terms today. The first one is a general purpose technics all the time, it's called roughing it.
Roughing it. Rough like r o u g h.
Yeah, which means to do things with very limited conveniences. So it would be doing things like the hard way or doing it the old fashioned way.
So roughing it is um basically you don't have a lot to use. You have the basics.
Ideas like you're going outside to sleep at night and you have a knife, your clothes.
Okay that's roughing it. To me camping itself would be roughing it, and?
Next one is a fairly simple one, sleep under the stars.
Sleep under the stars. That's very romantic if you don't think about the bugs and the public toilet.
Like you can sleep under the stars for a lot of people in their own backyards or some place that's not gonna be small like that. It is literally that but when you sleep under the stars, you're not in a tent. You are out in the open so you will wake up early.
And?
Last one is pitch a tent.
Pitch a tent pitch p i t c h, it's just put up a tent.
Literally is put up a tent. Okay but we can also use this as an idiom to say you should get prepared for something. But mostly, yes, it just means to set up a tent.
Alright. So that's the end of today's episode, if you want to know more about camping …
If you want to know more about camping, stay tuned for the next advanced episode of camping.
Yeah. We'll see you next time.
Bye everyone.
Bye.

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